


Symphony

by billspilledquill



Category: Le Rouge et Le Noir - Opéra Rock, Le Rouge et Le Noir | The Black and The Red - Stendhal
Genre: Gen, Guillotine, Listen if I will have to fill the tags myself in this inexistent fandom then so be it, Literary References & Allusions, Madame Derville appears for four lines in the book but who am I kidding she’s gay, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-24 15:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15633600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: Julien’s head fell. It was not worth remarking on.





	Symphony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WildandWhirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/gifts).



> Okay.  
> I have heard about this book for a long time and brought it a month ago. I have heard from WildandWhirling that there’s a musical about it. Great. So I read the book before I went to check the musical.  
> Now I find myself rereading the book in _one day straight_ and watched 16 hours equivalent of movie adaptations of this damn book. What the actual hell. 
> 
> So please enjoy the worst fic that I have possibly written because I can’t cope with it anymore. What is this beautiful and terrible book. What the hell. Don’t touch me.

 

 

> _A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded._  
>  _It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior._

 

 

The first time Julien dared to venture into the street full of houses from the bourgeois and their society, he saw the slimmers of gold that seemed to hide in the clouds.

There are so much clouds in Verrières, he thought, his ragged demeanor and his shirt a little tight. It is a Friday, so it must rain today.

He had always carried in his pocket a small piece of writing; whether it is a book or a journal, there were always things to carry. He can feel a little weight, and can feel as if it was his own. Napoleon reads constantly in his fairer, younger age. Napoleon has always read, so anyone can now read him.

Julien hummed a little song. His bag was Sainte-Hélène and he was Bonaparte. La memoire, la memoire, la memoire. He can remember the number of the clouds if he stare long enough. The houses were beautiful enough to distract him from the skies. Aim no higher, the edifices argued, no one would buy lands out of the blue from the gods, and if you look high above, why don’t you just build castle in the clouds?

The nineteenth century is grim, he thought again to himself when he returned home, his father looking disapprovingly. If I could go back from the age of Charlemagne, of Richelieu, I would have nothing left than honor in the high seas!

His father cries to him to work, and suddenly the hatred turned to passion; there was something higher for me. My father never loved me, nor do I, my brothers beat me. Was Napoleon’s brother disliked or disgusted? The dreams never fell away, but his hair grew longer, and the land was a little bit tougher to work on every day.

His brother liked to pull his ears, because he can’t seem to hear anything. At sometime Julien assumed that they are just naturally red. It sounded better in his head.

“What can it be in that little mind of yours to make you so damn useless,” He said. Julien wondered about killing himself or him, but he dreamt about other things as well. “Say, Jules, what are you reading?”

“I am not reading anything.”

“Stop that, you are rat-faced enough to be passed off as a professor.”

He thought he hid it well, but it was with repressed tears when his brother took it away from him. Benoît laughed at that little cover, Julien was surprised, he believed that he couldn’t read.

“I don’t know much about this man, Jules,” he said, almost kind. “But I have heard that all Bonaparte’s friends are all secretly jacobins. Jules, a Revolution would make you the first on the Place de Greve! I never lived outside, but you have this horrible smell of an aristocrat.”

Julien looked at this blue-eyed monster. Does that make me one, too? “You know nothing about me,” he said. He got a hundred bruises, more or less. He did learn not to speak, after that.

When he escaped in that small river, where you can see the mountains of Verrières, uneven and odd to the calm river beneath him, Julien would read Le Memorial, and would live blessedly in the past for a few hours per day.

If I were in the Revolution, he mused. I would be Talleyrand. He didn’t doubt the cold passion he would devote himself with, and then for the mighty Empire that France would grace herself with. I will not hurt la patrie, I will fall to my knees, and prostrate myself to a better god. They didn’t believed in deity and priests, he thought with some excitement, only the reason.

Maybe I would be Danton, he realized not without some tremor inside him. God, would my head be worthy to show to the people, then?

His fingers hovered on the pages, thought, it was nothing to be remarking on. It was not worth remarking on, about heads and beheadings.

 

*

 

I am in love, he realized. I have been in love so many times.

Julien looked at his coat, petticoat. Black. He looked at Mme de Renal’s eyes. Black. They were the same, yet he can only be in love with one of them. It was not difficult to choose. The night fell, and they fell to each other with desolation.

He was desperate, for nobility of reason, for passion. He despaired over everything that he did not lack.

“Mon ami,” she said once in their most intimate moment. His fingers intertwined hers, as he tried not to fly away. “You are a great man, but you are born in the wrong period. What blasphemy would Voltaire say if you tell him that your race of your kind exist?”

She was talking about his ambition, his love, his drive, whatever. He was exceptionally dull, and his hair was beautiful. Julien Sorel belonged in his time. If only the time belonged to him, he would have make it his servant. I am god, he thought. I am that egotistical god in the Book, with His vanity picked, decided that self-destruction was a better idea than living.

He despised the Bible that he knew by heart, it was as if latin was drumming against his pulse, and again and again, words that were not his steam out, for god bless you, father, god bless you, sister.

“I am the last man standing,” he kissed her, said words that should be his. “I shall perish soon, hopefully, Madame. M. Voltaire would be so elated that pamphlets would be flowing in the streets, and desolated fifteen days after my death.”

“If a revolution comes, you would be Sieyes,” she said softly. Everything about her was soft beyond his touch.

“You would be dead,” he said simply.

“I would dead,” she said.

As they made love, Julien thought about dressing up as her, taking the penalty at her place. His head would hit the wooden plate, people chanting death to aristocrats. He was not tired of heroism yet. He thought of his head in the basket, the sound of it swift and quick, and is heard no more. Vive La Revolution.

Applause.

The ladder that they hid was discovered. Julien had to flee. It was not worth remarking on.

 

*

 

He rode a beautiful horse. But the blue petticoat had a more significant value. Military glory was not something to be over fought for. Someone gave him an outfit, and he wore it like a decoration.

He imagined himself handling a spear, a sword. In a great deal of descriptions and imaginings, wild and willing words began to form a golden doom. The King was before him, the young priest was reciting words that he heard, understood, and memorized. God bless you.

If monarchy wasn’t build in gold, Julien might not be indifferent about it. Too many things were embellished golden that it wasn’t distracting enough anymore.

Tartuffe blessed his family. Mlle de La Mole looked splendid in her Paris gown. Tartuffe was laughing at him in his usual manner, vile and honest. If only Moliere had created me, Julien thought, if only I could see her again.

I could have ruled, he said to himself on his way to Paris. Would a king be more brave than me? A woman starved in the streets; was she more pitiful than me? Superiority was everything, and I am the sword to a duel, I am a witness, a second.

Madame, he said, holding his hand out in the air, held it firm. Madame, permettez-vous?

And he prostrated himself on the ground, kneeling, his new polished boots making a clear sound. He cried to the church. The church was loud with sin.

 

*

 

“Did you ate the fruits I brought you yesterday?”

Mathilde blinked. Julien was sleeping, or pretending not to hear. He was thinner now, but then again, he was never really not bone against bone, his flesh pale in the starched manner he curled into himself, he was not sleeping, she realized. I love him.

“You are my husband,” she said, pride seeping in her voice. She carried her head higher. “You are our child’s father. Get up and eat, Julien.”

The look of utter disgust was not a mistake, she knew. It was intentional. I have hurt him the same way too, and god willing, if this is the price of getting him out of this gutter, so be it.

He called her name, smiled thinly. Everything felt small into this room, but Julien was even smaller. “If you were born a man, Mathilde,” he said. “You will be destined to be Wellington.”

She crossed her arms, her dress strained by the smell of the prison. Tears steamed her eyes. “I would never hurt you, Julien.”

Her husband looked at her pointedly, seemed to see through her. “Then leave me, my friend. Leave me. I need a peace of mind.” He closed his eyes, turned his back to her, the fruits dirtying the floor. He spoke with an elegance that wasn’t there before handling a gun to her rival, he sounded noble, just. A god on the run.

Done, done, done. She saw with horror that his head was not on his neck anymore. He was reaching the clouds, by a sort of feverish bravery and determination. Foolishness.

She didn’t dare to speak another word. She trailed slowly on her way out, thinking about the queen Marguerite. She hoped she was one. Boniface de La Mole slept in the dungeon for a little more, waiting for the days to come and eat him alive.

 

*

 

Fouqué looked about Madame Derville for a moment, and Julien was almost enchanted by it. In his mind, Madame Derville would kiss Madame de Renal like this. Just like this, he thought, and showed it to him.

I am in love, he knew. I have been in love so many times.

Julien was not impulsive. But he had been in love so many goddamn times in his life, it was hard not to act on it. I am in love with life every time it tries to take me away, he thought, his lips on Fouqué’s. I continue to be in love with love, it is ridiculous.

His father loved money as much as him, so of course they would dislike the same things too. Father never loved me. I have hated him as long as I remember.

He kissed him a little longer, until he decided that it was enough. Fouqué talked to him about an escaping plot, after that.

Julien listened half way, looked out at the tiny window beside him. He thought about the days when he used to peak outside of his room to perceive Mathilde there at the garden. She would wear black, sometimes. His mind drifted to Mme de Renal’s eyes.

He was tired of heroism. He examined the creases between the walls, saying, look, I am not ready for death, but I have been ready for the past three days, so why now?

“What are you saying, Julien?” Fouqué asked, stopping in mid-way of whatever thoughts he was citing.

Fouqué was a bourgeois of some means, he thought, putting his hand on his shoulder. I skidded through the finest of men, taken women with Parisian dresses. Why am I still shy? Why am I still afraid of death? Why this duality of thoughts?

Why, in all this midst of terror and presumption, I am still one of them?

“Leave me,” he said, weak. He said it again, just to make sure. Fouqué left. Something was familiar in this scheme of things. Julien felt the fever gaining him once more. His fingers twitched, searching for a book that was long burned, fallen into a tiny puddle of water, where he stood among the mountains of Verrières, ambition. This, was ambition, a vindication of its rights. I have always hated god.

God, he thought. But was Napoleon different from Louis the sixteen?

Voltaire argued, of course it is, their clothes are different.

 

*

 

Madame de Renal’s eyes were as black as the first time he had seen them. He fell to his knees, hated himself and her and Mathilde, and all fell back to where it began.

Louise looked at Julien, damp with humidity and tears in his eyes, a deep, horrid blush on his face. He looked like a girl, she thought, no more than seventeen. It began like this, and everything was back, around and around. A snake would devour its own children, but she just needed a shot in the back of her head.

Julien smiled, his eyes soft and pliant, all ambition gone, so was the light that shone behind it.

“Have you,” he said, “heard of Boniface de La Mole?”

  
*

 

Julien’s head fell. It was not worth remarking on.

 

*

 

Julien thought, if my head fell, would it be worth remarking on?

 

**Author's Note:**

> ##### *whispers* what the hell


End file.
